Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet discharging apparatus and an image forming apparatus including the same which is configured to heat a toner image so as to fix the toner image onto a sheet.
Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, an image forming apparatus, such as a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and a printer, which is configured to form a toner image on a sheet, heats the toner image together with the sheet so as to fix the toner image onto the sheet. Therefore, the sheet discharged to the discharge tray is heated. Hence, the sheets discharged to the discharge tray overlap each other to result in re-fusion of the toner image formed on the sheet. In such a case, the sheets adhere to each other through the toner. Further, when the adhering sheets are separated from each other, the sheets may be damaged.
In this context, there has hitherto been proposed an image forming apparatus that cools the sheet discharged to the discharge tray with air so as to prevent the sheets from adhering to each other (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-145880).
In recent years, when a toner image is heated with a sheet, in order to reduce a volatile organic compound (VOC) as a vaporized material generated from toner or the sheet, a removing unit is provided in the apparatus to suppress an emission amount to an outside of the apparatus. However, recent image forming apparatus are required to reduce a greater amount of vaporized material released out of the apparatus. In this case, according to the conventional structure, when only a cooling fan (cooling unit) configured to cool the sheet on the discharge tray with air is arranged, some vaporized materials which cannot be removed in the apparatus may diffuse to the outside of the apparatus. Therefore, it is difficult for the related-art image forming apparatus to achieve both the cooling of the sheet and the reduction of the vaporized material.